Scuba Thailand (Koh Tao)

We've been here nearly a week now and I've completed my Advanced Open Water Diver's license and Patti has completed her Open Water Diver (with deep certificate) and we can now dive together. We have a big full day trip planned to "Sail Rock" on the 31st, this is considered the best dive spot in the gulf of Thailand. We had a great dive today near the island and saw bull sharks, schools of barracuda, grouper, stingrays and so much more. If Sail rock lives up to the diving hype it has been getting then this island paradise should only get better. I will have racked up 11 dives here and Patti 7 when we finally leave if we ever do.

Love you all

Colin and Patti

Merry Christmas to All!

We know it's two days late but Merry Christmas to everyone. It is especially hard right now to be away from home and we miss friends and family terribly. We've made the best of Christmas by buying a small (about 10cm) Christmas tree, wreath and fake presents (similar scale to the tree) to "season" up our present home in Thailand. Photos will be posted shortly on the photo site.
In front of our beach bungalow, Christmas eve.
Pint sized tree and similar sized presents.

Spoiled in Bangkok

After 1 month of 200 rupee a night rooms in India (on average), we were spoiled by a 5 star hotel in Bangkok. We have Micheal to thank for this little gift and it did not disappoint; king sized bed, swimming pool, incredible buffet breakfast, shower the size of our rooms in India, great views and air conditioning. I 'm not sure how we can return to our budget accommodations.
Thanks Mike

Goodbye to good friends

We've left India and arrived in Thailand and what a relief to arrive in a relaxed clean country. I'm not sure many people would call Bangkok relaxed but compared to Indian it feels asleep. There is so much to reflect on from a great country, but more importantly we want to say thanks the great travel partners we had.

We met Celia and Dave on the night train from Gorakphur to Varanasi and spent three nights in Varanasi with them and then met up again in Udaipur, camel trekked in Jaisalmer and drank in Delhi. We are so glad to have met these Vancouverites and had the pleasure of also enjoying the greatest birds of paradise display ever seen in India.
Dave and Celia in the desert and yes that is Dave's plumbers crack.

Jenny Gardner....Ladies and Gentlemen (applause). We met Jenny in Tanzania and travelled with her (whining and snorting) all the to Cape Town and then on to India. It was our great pleasure to have her along as she provided endless entertainment. Jenny also provided a break from ourselves and prevented a potential slip into marital insanity.
Jenny after her rabies vaccine in the Pushkar Government Hospital

Last night out in Connaught place.

Thanks and we can't wait to see you all again.

Air India: Whisky, Bollywood and non-stop Celine Dion. Good thing there were barf bags.

We had the distinct pleasure of flying Indian Airways, well actually Air India. We still aren't sure which airline we were supposed to be on since our tickets said Indian Airways but we ended up on an Air India flight. Whatever airline we were or weren't supposed to fly with, it sure didn't disappoint. The food (Indian curries) was some of the best airline food I've ever had and also pretty good compared to the dishes we've had while travelling in India. It didn't stop there. The unlimited single malt on the drink cart which showed up regularly, not like Air Canada's one drink service, probably made the in flight entertainment even better. Entertainment, which was provided by very high tech seat back T.V featured lots of Bollywood including a great hindy comedy with cameos from Denise Richards and Sylvester Stallone. This included some great footage of him kicking some Indian ass and it was all set in The United States. However great the Stallone and Richards movie was, it had nothing on the all Celine Dion music video channel. Considering it appears that Celine only had about 10-12 music videos they all played at least 7-8 times. The worst part was that a large amount of people on the plane were definitely watching non-stop repeat Celine....Barf.I hope everyone gets the chance to ride the Indian airways.

WE HAVE PASSPORTS!!

Good news everyone!! We have Canadian Passports again! After a stressful 3 weeks or so, we obtained our new Canadian passports. For those who don't know, we filled up our old passports and didn't have room for any new visas. So we applied for new ones.
It has been quite a trial going through this in India. When we first went into the Canadian Embassy here in Delhi, we were told 'no worries about getting your new passport before you leave...sure it says on this sign here that it takes 15 days to process but we are 99.9% sure you'll have them back in 10 working days'. Well, 10 working days later we arrived at the embassy to hear 'oh, your passports are in the air flying from Paris to Delhi...we are 99.9% sure they will PROBABLY be here on Friday...but maybe you should look into changing your flight on Sunday'. I didn't want to remind the lady that she was 99.9% sure we'd get them on Wednesday. Pissing this lady off didn't seem like a good idea since she controlled whether or not we could leave the country this weekend. This morning, Friday the 18th (12 working days later), we got our new passports!! Thank goodness!
While we didn't have a passport we almost got kicked out of several guesthouses. The Indians are very firm about seeing your passports on arrival to the hotel. Even with all of our photocopies it was hard to convince them we weren't some sort of con-artist or terrorist. For the last hotel, we had to have the Canadian Embassy call the guesthouse man.

Anyway, long story short....we have our passports and we can leave peacefully to Thailand!!

Attari Border Crossing

Hey all! Just like the blog below says, Amritsar was amazing! Nothing dissapointed there. One highlight, on top of the Golden Temple, was the Attari Border Closing Ceremony.

Every day at the border crossing between Pakistan and India closes at around 5ish. Each day THOUSANDS of people go to the border at this time to watch the hilarious closing of the border. Upon arrival at the border crossing, I felt like I was entering a sporting event. People were singing, cheering, waving flags and acting very patriotically. After a quick frisk and a dodgy metal detector, we entered the grandstand seating to watch the spectacle. Before it began, women were dancing in the streets to the Indian techno playing over the loud speakers. When the music stopped, a man at a microphone began to crank up the crowd. He started some wild chanting of HINDUSTAN!! And some more Hindi cheers. I waved my 5rupee plastic Indian flag with all my energy. On the Pakistani side, they also had grandstands (women seated separately from the men) and a head cheerleading male to get them all excited.
Finally it was time for the border guards to do their thing. There was a quick screaming match between the Indian and the Pakistan side. This involved an Indian guard yelling into a microphone while a Pakistani guard yelled into his microphone and they competed to see who could scream for the longest time. No matter who won both sides cheered. Then guards marched towards the gate in a way I can only describe by saying they looked like they belonged to the Ministry of Silly Walks. We were in stitches. It was one of the funniest/strangest things I have ever seen. About 5 guards took their turns walking in their 'silly walk' fashion towards the gate, directly at a silly walking Pakistani. Then they posed at the gate and started at their opposition. This part of the ceremony reminded me of when 2 male animals or birds are competing for a mating partner....who has the puffiest feathers or the most extreme dance moves.

All in all, this was one of the strangest experiences of my life. My description does this event no justice for how odd it really is. The combination of the patriotic crowd acting like they are at the Superbowl and the Silly Walking guards (the most silly walks get the biggest cheers from the crowd) made this afternoon quite amazing. I apologize for the video quality...I was trying to scream along with the crowd and also trying to watch.

Honoured Guests at the Goldern Temple

After a 6 hr bus ride, then a 10hr night train and another 2 hr train (all lower class) we arrived in the Punjabi town of Amritsar. Amritsar is famous for the Golden Temple, which is the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion. The is by far the greatest religious sight I've ever visited. It's estimated that there are tens of thousands of pilgrims that visit daily. The most amazing part is that every visitor (Sikh or not) is welcome to stay for free in the guest house and eat for free. We were fortunate to dine several times with at least a couple of thousand pilgrims. It is truly amazing feeling to be so warmly welcomed and then handed fresh curry and chapati while sitting on the floor with thousands of other people. Of the three days we spent in Amritsar we visited the Golden Temple 3 times each day.

The Golden Temple is located inside the Temple complex in the middle of the holy tank. The temple is covered in 750kg of gold and holy men are reading prayers all day from inside, which is broadcast to the entire complex. There are more photos on our picasa page follow the link in the upper right.
This picture was taken during one of our meals with Hindu, Sikh and anyone else wishing to have a meal. The meal room emptied and filled every 10min with a new group 24/7. Outside the temple volunteers cut vegetables and cleaned plates endlessly.

Turning up the heat in Udaipur

After leaving Delhi we've since been to Pushkar and now just spent 4 great days in Udaipur in central Rajasthan. We signed up last night for a cooking class with Shashi at her home below the Sunrise restaurant. It ran from 6 to 11pm and we cooked curries, pakora, naan, chapati and parantha plus got info on all kinds of other aspects of Indian cooking and life. This has been by far another highlight in India. Hopefully we can reproduce these dishes at home, as long as we can find the ingredients in Sudbury.

Potato, onion and veg pakora (with chillies) and fresh dips.

After we couldn't eat another bite we tried our hardest to get the family to eat the left overs but they only laughted and said it wasn't spicy enough so wasn't worth eating.

Colin, Shashi, Patti and Jenny post eating about 11 pm.

Agra and The Taj Mahal

We visited Agra to see the Taj Mahal before going to Delhi to get new passports so this is out of order however Agra deserves some comment.

We met lots of travellers who downplayed Agra and the Taj Mahal citing too many people and over priced entry. It did cost 700 rupees ($16) per person, which is outrageous compared to virtually any other sight in India and there were lots of tourists. That being said there is something almost fairy tale about this building, it is much larger and more beautifull than any photo I've ever seen and the crowds were swallowed up by the imense size of theTaj grounds.


Truly beautiful

Passport-less in India

Under-estimating the amount of space the greedy African border officials needed for visas and stamps we no longer have enough space for Visas in the up-coming countries we hope to visit. The result was a quick jaunt aboard the lowest class rail available to the Canadian Embassy in New Delhi (due to the short notice) .

Why sit in the seats when the luggae rack will do (really getting to know India now)

As hard as I try I can't quite blend in with the locals, next step is an orange hat.

If all goes well we should have new passports in 2.5 weeks when we pass back through Delhi on the way to Thailand. A great thanks to the extra freindly staff at the Canadian Embassy.

Cheers